Dread on Arrival (12 page)

“A high-end boutique.”

“And Belter’s got a pawn shop, right? You sell and buy stuff in a pawn shop. You buy and sell stuff in a what-d’ya-call-it? High-end boutique? Old stuff. There’s a limited amount of old stuff around. Towns like ours with attics and basements filled with junk are getting harder and harder to find. Belter’s out there scoping out the action for himself.”

Quill was taken aback. “You know, it never occurred to me that Edmund might be a source for Rose Ellen’s stock.”

“It should have. Jeez. Does your mother know you’re out? Come on. Things are heating up over there.”

Josephine Barcini stepped in front of the security guard who had started after Belter and directed the Steadicam into his face. The shorter security guard stuck his cell phone in his belt and shoved the camera away. Mrs. Barcini hit him from behind with her purse. Then Mrs. Barcini screamed: “Doughhead!”

Marge set off at a sturdy trot. Quill hurried after her. By the time they crossed the worn grass to the auditorium doors, the security guards were surrounded by shouting, shoving Barcinis and a crowd of confused villagers. Nadine Peterson clutched her green garbage bag to her chest. Next to her, Esther West cradled a tissue-wrapped package and looked wildly from side to side. Harvey Bozzel held a majolica vase over his head to avoid the forward and backward sway of the crush. He caught sight of Quill and mouthed: “Help.”

Marge grabbed Nadine by the arm and towed her to the sidewalk. Then she took the package from Esther and shoved her in Nadine’s direction. She poked Harvey in the ribs to get his attention, gave him Esther’s package, and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. Holding both items up as if wading through a waist-deep puddle, Harvey went and stood by Esther and Nadine.

Marge tapped Mrs. Barcini on the back, ducked Mrs. Barcini’s roundhouse right, and grabbed her by the neck. Mrs. Barcini’s eyes bulged.

“Hey!” Belter shouted. “That’s my mamma you’ve got by the throat!”

Josephine Barcini swung the camera around in an eager circle.

“You’re under arrest,” Marge said to Mrs. Barcini.

Mrs. Barcini’s lips formed the word “Doughhead.”

Belter’s face reddened. He shoved the security guards out of his way and advanced on Marge. Quill moved forward to stop him.

Marge glared at him. “You’re under arrest, too, buster. Disturbing the peace.” She released her grip on Mrs. Barcini’s throat. “Write ’em up, Quill.”

Quill opened her mouth and then shut it.

“I’m making a citizen’s arrest,” Marge said. She nodded in Quill’s direction. “I don’t need to tell you, Barcini, that a citizen’s arrest is valid when a public offense is committed in the presence of the arresting private citizen. That’s me.” She looked around the circle of startled faces and said, “You all want to remember that when you walk into that polling booth and vote for me for mayor.” She turned back to Barcini. “This is the duly appointed secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. She’s going to write up the ticket.”

Quill started and fumbled in her skirt pocket for her sketch pad. She found a lightbulb in a Baggie instead. What was she doing with a lightbulb in her pocket?

Marge raised her voice, apparently under the misapprehension that she wasn’t loud enough already. “And then I’m taking you down to the sheriff’s office where you can explain to Sheriff Kiddermeister where you get off starting a riot in my town and why I had to rescue three of our finest citizens from you and your thugs.”

A faint cheer sounded from the three rescued citizens.

“Thugs? What thugs! My mamma and my sister?” Belter said. “There’s no riot, either. And if there was a riot, it wasn’t me that started anything. You want thugs, you get a load of these two.”

The two security guards resettled their sunglasses and looked impassive.

“Are you all perfectly demented?” Edmund Tree stepped out of the shadows of the auditorium and into the sunlight. He adjusted the cuffs of his suit coat, smoothed his tie, and stared icily at Barcini. Rose Ellen drifted behind him, a faint smile on her lips. She settled next to Quill, her perfume an expensive cloud around her.

Belter’s little beady eyes lit up and his drawl intensified. “Now looky, looky here. If it isn’t the great Mr. Tree hisself.” He stuck his thumb in his belt. Josephine pointed the Steadicam at his face and pulled in for a close-up. He grinned widely, revealing the need for some dental whitening strips—or at least a sturdier toothbrush. “What d’ya think, folks? Should I chop him into kindling? Lop off a few of his branches? Trim him down to size?”

“Hoorah!” Mamma Barcini yelled. She began to applaud. “Get the doughhead! Get him!”

In what Quill was sure was a reflex action, a couple of other people began to clap, too.

Belter shoved his face closer to the camera. “Is Mr. Tree ready for … the Barcini Slap Down?!”

“Yay!” Mamma Barcini cheered. She put two fingers to her mouth and whistled. “Slap Down. Slap Down!”

“Barcini,” Edmund said coldly, “I have no idea what a slap down may be. Nor do I wish to be enlightened. I am asking you to leave. Now.”

Belter flexed his right arm, which was surprisingly well muscled. “Well, now, Eddie, I don’t think you’d stand a chance against the old Belter here. But I’ll challenge you and your stuck-up pals to whatever kind of contest you want. Don’t even have to be manly. Belter’s man enough to get in touch with his feminine side. Right, folks?”

“You tell ’em, Belter!” Mamma Barcini shouted.

He twirled around on his tiptoes. “Dancing, maybe? Nope? What other kinds of girly things are you up to, Eddie? C’mon. Man up, Eddie. Man up and take the challenge.”

Edmund thinned his lips in a grimace of distaste. “I’ve warned you about harassing me, Barcini.” He nodded elegantly in Quill’s direction. “As Mrs. Quilliam-McHale will attest. Why you persist in trailing after me is anyone’s guess, but I’m sick and tired of it. I don’t want to warn you again. Get out. Pack up your trashy bus, your trailer-trash hangers-on and go. Get away from my show and leave these good people alone.” He snapped his fingers at the security guards. “Get rid of them, Marco,” he said. He walked over to Rose Ellen and settled his hands protectively on her shoulders.

The guards grabbed Belter, one on each arm, and hustled him toward the bus. Josephine, still running the Steadicam, walked after him. Mrs. Barcini adjusted her T-shirt around her hips and followed her daughter, head high.

“Edmund.” Rose Ellen was barely audible. “The camera? Little sis? We wouldn’t want any of this aired, would we? Tell Marco to relieve him of it, can’t you?”

“Excellent idea.” Edmund raised his voice in a gentlemanly shout. “Marco. The tape?”

The shorter security guard nodded, turned, and wrenched the camera out of Josephine’s hands. She shrieked and kicked at him and wrenched the camera back.

Quill cleared her throat. “The camera doesn’t belong to you, Mr. Tree. And I don’t think Josephine is all that much of a threat to your goons.”

Edmund shrugged. “Let it go, Marco.”

The guards shoved the Barcinis onto the bus, one by one.

After a long moment, Belter started the engine, put the bus in gear, and pulled onto the lane that led out of the parking lot. He drove slowly. As he passed by, he glared at Edmund through the windshield. Edmund raised his hand in a short, cocky salute and sneered back.

Both of them looked mad enough to kill.

7

∼Choux Pastry∼

1 cup of water3 ounces salted butter1 cup of flour1 cup of eggs, beaten(For sweet pastry add 1 teaspoon sugar to flour)Boil water and butter in a saucepan. Lower heat to lowest setting. Stir in flour and mix with fork until smooth. Put ball of pastry into a glass bowl and beat with spoon. Add egg mixture and beat until smooth. Pinch off dough into balls. Dip balls into beaten egg. Place balls onto greased cookie sheet and bake at 425 degrees for about twenty minutes. “Marge was amazing. Just amazing. If she hadn’t stepped in the way she did, I think we would have had a riot.” Quill clasped her hands behind her back and looked over Meg’s shoulder as her sister briskly folded raw eggs into a mixture of flour and water with a large fork. “You’re making choux pastry?”

“What does it look like? Of course it’s choux pastry.” Meg nudged her away from the prep table. “You know it makes me crazy when you kibitz. Go sit in your rocker.”

“Since when have we specialized in choux pastry?”

“Since I decided on the appetizers for the Tree cocktail party tonight.”

“You’re not doing country pâté with cheeses?”

“That, too, plus shrimp bites, wild mushrooms in cream, and something with leeks, which I will figure out when I get there.”

“Did you get the recipe from Clare?”

“I think I know how to make a choux pastry as well as Clare.” Meg whacked the fork against the stainless-steel bowl to dislodge the bits of pastry. “So then what happened?”

“At the high school? Everybody lined back up and took their assembled attic finds into the auditorium.”

“What’s with the Slap Down business?”

Quill shrugged and sat down in the rocking chair. “I’m not sure. But apparently these kinds of challenges are common enough on reality shows. They stage a challenge and then the audience gets to vote on who wins. That’s according to Rose Ellen, who seems to think that Edmund should respond somehow. They both think Belter’s going to run the tape on the next
Pawn-o-Rama
program. Rose Ellen says it’s a technique to get viewers to participate in the action, which is supposed to keep them loyal supporters.”

“Gladiator contests,” Meg said dismissively. “It’s pretty clear that arm wrestling’s out of the picture. I’ll tell you one thing that’s non–gender specific—cooking.”

“True.”

“So they could have a cooking contest.”

“The mind boggles. Can we forget about the Trees and the Barcinis for a minute? Let’s talk about pastry.”

“Sure.” Meg divided the pastry into two large balls and added a handful of fine sugar to one of them. She began to beat it briskly with a fork.

“I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the menu planning yesterday morning, but I’m pretty sure Clare’s planning something similar for the wedding reception.”

“These will be better.”

Quill knew that set to Meg’s chin. She gave up.

Meg glanced at her and then looked away. “So who made it onto the show? Anybody turn up with a fabulous find?”

“Harvey did, with his collection of majolica. It’s beautiful, actually. His mother and grandmother collected it. You’ll never guess who else—Dookie brought in a pile of journals and newspaper clippings from the Civil War. Esther had some very nice jewelry from her great-great-whatever-aunts. Those landscapes Adela and Elmer have always had in their living room? I guess they made the cut.”

“Those lake and waterfall things? The ones she says came down to her from her many times great-grandpa?”

“Yep. They get to have them evaluated.”

Meg pinched off small rounds of dough and placed them on the oversized cookie sheets she used for baking. She did this with incredible speed. “You sound dubious.”

“I am dubious. I’ve seen
Ancestor’s Attic
, you know. Tree always has one major disappointment or embarrassment.” Quill braced her foot on the floor and set the rocker going.

“He likes making people look foolish, you mean. Not very nice.”

“No. He is not very nice.”

“I don’t remember Adela’s paintings all that well. Are they any good?”

“Early American landscapes. Oils. The artist is obscure. Rebecca Winthrop. A woman who painted at a time when women weren’t respected at all. And for all I know, she may be experiencing a vogue, now.”

“But the paintings themselves?”

Quill shook her head. Musicians wince at flat notes. Writers wince at clunky prose. Painters wince at bad lines.

“So are you going to warn Adela and Elmer? Aren’t you meeting them for lunch in, like, ten minutes? You could drop a word then.”

“A lot of art criticism is subjective. Not only is it subjective, it’s subjective within the context of the prevailing culture.”

Meg took a second to work this out. “Hm. So you aren’t going to say a thing?”

“I’m not going to say a thing. Not to them, anyway.”

“You’ll tackle the Great Edmund himself? Phuut! You got hope.” She slapped the sheet of pastry into an oven and began prepping a second sheet. “So why do those guys hate each other, anyway? Barcini and Tree. Sounds like a comedy act.”

“There wasn’t anything funny about this morning, I’ll tell you that. Although I don’t think they hate each other as much as they like the ratings coming from a widely publicized feud.”

Meg stared at her. “My sister the cynic.”

“Your sister the realist.” She wanted to add, “There’ll be further trouble, mark my words,” but didn’t.

Kathleen Kiddermeister pushed open the swinging door that led to the kitchen and stuck her head inside. “Quill? Mayor Henry and his wife are here. They said you’d be joining them? I did a setup for five, like you asked.”

Quill smoothed her hair, straightened her sleeves, and adjusted her skirt, frowning at the lump in her pocket. She followed Kathleen into the dining room. Suddenly, she remembered why she had the lightbulb in her pocket. “Will you see Davy anytime today, Kathleen?”